Wilson; and throughout he [the author] shews himself well read in Stage-Coaches, Country Squires, Inns, and Inns of Court. His reflections upon high people and low people, and misses and masters, are very good. However the exaltedness of some minds (or rather as I shrewdly suspect their insipidity and want of feeling or observation) may make them insensible to these light things, (I mean such as characterise and paint nature) yet surely they are as weighty and much more useful than your grave discourses upon the mind, the passions, and what not.” And thereupon follows that fantastic utterance concerning the romances of MM. Marivaux and Crebillon fils, which has disconcerted so many of Gray’s admirers. We suspect that any reader who should nowadays contrast the sickly and sordid intrigue of the Paysan Parvenu with the healthy animalism of Joseph Andrews would greatly prefer the latter. Yet Gray’s verdict, though cold, is not undiscriminating, and is perhaps as much as one could expect from his cloistered and fastidious taste.
Various anecdotes, all more or less apocryphal, have been related respecting the first appearance of Joseph Andrews, and the sum paid to the author for the copyright. A reference to the original assignment, now in the Forster Library at South Kensington, definitely settles the latter point. The amount in “lawful Money of Great Britain,” received by “Henry Fielding, Esq.” from “Andrew Millar of St. Clement’s Danes in the Strand,” was L183 11s. In this document, as in the order to Nourse of which a facsimile is given by Roscoe, both the author’s name and signature are written with the old-fashioned double f, and he calls himself “Fielding”
